“He enters the Café Truffaut, sees a young soldier who pleases him. By the intermediation of the waiter he makes an appointment, and departs without waiting for an answer. If the soldier agrees, he goes to the appointed place of meeting, and never goes alone, because FatherC——n(the elderly urning) is well known. As soon as the two have met, other soldiers make their appearance, beat the old man, and compel him to give them all the money which he has about him. He does this willingly, and without ceasing prays for pardon. When he has not a single sou left, and when he has also given up his watch, he goes away weeping, and continually repeating the words, ‘What a miserable man I am!’”
“He enters the Café Truffaut, sees a young soldier who pleases him. By the intermediation of the waiter he makes an appointment, and departs without waiting for an answer. If the soldier agrees, he goes to the appointed place of meeting, and never goes alone, because FatherC——n(the elderly urning) is well known. As soon as the two have met, other soldiers make their appearance, beat the old man, and compel him to give them all the money which he has about him. He does this willingly, and without ceasing prays for pardon. When he has not a single sou left, and when he has also given up his watch, he goes away weeping, and continually repeating the words, ‘What a miserable man I am!’”
This elderly urning was manifestly also a masochist, and therefore a very suitable victim of blackmailers, whom we here see at their work. In the police report to which we have already referred homosexual orgies are also described, the participants in which assumed women’s names and practised mutual masturbation and fellation, and also carried out obscene practices with a bitch. When Oscar Metenier in his book “Vertus et Vices Allemands” (Paris, 1904) states that Berlin has a monopoly in the matter of urnings’ balls, which, in his opinion, were not possible in Paris, he is unquestionably wrong as regards the time of the Second Empire. In this police report two typical urnings’ balls are mentioned. One of these took place in a house in the Place de la Madeleine, belonging to E. D., a man of business, who gave the ball on January 2, 1864. The second urnings’ ball was given by the Vicomte de M. in the Pavilion Rohan, Rue de Rivoli, on January 16, 1864, at which at least 150 men, many of them in woman’s clothing, took part. In many cases the appearance was so deceptive that even those who had invited the guests were not always able to determine the sex with certainty.
It is doubtless true that there is no other town in which there are so many social unions of homosexuals as there are in Berlin. Hirschfeld records—in addition to private parties—dinners, suppers, evening parties, five o’clock teas, picnics, dances, and summer festivals of homosexuals, which are arranged every winter by urnings, and by female homosexuals or their friends. Moreover, the male and female homosexuals meet in certain restaurants, cafés, eating-houses, and public-houses frequented only bythemselves.[544]
Such localities exclusively for the use of urnings exist in Berlin to the number of eighteen to twenty. There are also social literary unions, such as the club “Lohengrin,” the antifeministic “Gesellschaft der Eigenen,” the “Platen-Gemeinschaft,” etc. There are also cabarets (public-houses) for urnings. Hirschfeld, in his book “Berlin’s Third Sex,” written in a popular style, but extremely valuable owing to the clearness of his descriptions, gives an exhaustive account of all these institutions for urnings, and for further details I may refer my readers to this interesting work, the authenticity of which I am able to confirm as the result of my own visits to the above-mentioned places of meeting forurnings.[545]
In Paris there no longer exist places of entertainment frequented solely by urnings. In this respect they are replaced by certain Turkish baths, whose patrons are almost without exception homosexuals—men whose age varies from about twenty years upwards. In the industrial quarter, in the neighbourhood of the Place de la République, there existed a few years ago a Turkish bath, visited almost exclusively by young homosexuals between the ages of fifteen and twenty years. On the great boulevard there is a bath of a very expensive character, visited only by wealthy homosexuals, frequented, among others, by a celebrated Frenchcomposer.[546]
A peculiar species of meeting-places for the urnings of Berlin is represented by the soldiers’ public-houses in the neighbourhood of the barracks, where soldiers are met and treated by homosexuals, and where arrangements are made for subsequent meetings. There also exists a “soldiers’ promenade,” where the soldiers walk up and down and offer themselves to homosexuals. Athletes also enter freely into relationships with homosexuals.
Urnings’ balls are to-day especially characteristic of Berlin. Von Krafft-Ebing has described them in detail, and recently also Hirschfeld has alluded to them in the above-mentioned work. I myself not long ago attended such a “men’s ball,” at which from eight hundred to a thousand homosexuals were present, some in men’s clothing, some in women’s clothing, some in fancy dress. The homosexuals dressed as women could have been distinguished from real women only by those in the secret. More particularly do I recall an elegant sylph, who, on the arm of a partner, glided across the hall—“glided” is the correct expression. During the dance his delicate features were leaning on the shoulder of the man, and he coquetted continually with ardent black eyes. I really believed this was a woman, but was assured that it was a male hairdresser. In the case of another urning dressed as a woman the diagnosis was rendered easier by a well-developed moustache.
The seamy side of the relationships of homosexuals in public life is constituted by the so-called “male prostitution,” which existed even in ancient times, and in our own day was especially well organized during the Second Empire, as we learn from the details given by Tardieu. The ranks of male prostitution are recruited partly from homosexual and partly from heterosexualmen of the lower and more poverty-stricken classes, who give themselves for payment to well-to-do urnings, and are practised in all the arts of elaborate coquetry (they use rouge, make a coquettish display of male charms, etc.). These are the so-called “aunts.” In all large towns there exists what is called a “Strich” (promenade), where male prostitutes are accustomed to walk, in order to attract their clients. In Berlin the principal promenades are the Friedrichstrasse, thePassage,[547]and some of the walks in the Tiergarten. Like female prostitution, so also male prostitution has its “houses of accommodation”; and in France there even existed, and still exist, typical “male brothels.” From 1820 to 1826 such a brothel was to be found in the Rue du Doyenne in Paris. In the neighbourhood of the Louvre the male inmates of this establishment were even subjected to regular medical examination, in order to protect their clients from venereal infection. With the fall of twilight the visitors made their appearance, and were received by youngeffeminates.[548]Still worse was another form of male prostitution, at the time of the Restoration, and in the earlier years of the reign of Louis Philippe—namely, the so-calledgrande montre des culsin the Rue des Marais, where a number of male prostitutes displayed and offered their charms to the homosexuals visiting the place. A detailed account of the way in which this was done cannot be given, but is sufficiently indicated by what has already beensaid.[549]
Male brothels exist even at the present day in Paris. Thus, at the end of the year 1905 in the Rue St. Martin there was a small hotel whose homosexual proprietor not only let rooms to urnings for a brief stay, but also kept on the premises five or six young men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two years, whose services were always available for homosexuals for payment. Besides this hotel there existed also in the year 1905 a kind of male brothel in the house of an urning, where at midday half a dozen young fellows were to be found, or could be fetched at brief notice, for the choice of homosexual visitors, for whose use a room was available at so many francs perhour.[550]
A phenomenon intimately related with male prostitution isblackmail, or “chantage.” Tardieu (op. cit., pp. 128-130) describes these relationships in vivid colours, and lays stress on the close relationship between male prostitution and criminality. Blackmail has become to-day a kind of specialprofession,[551]which is not directed solely against homosexuals, but also against heterosexuals, and the punishment of which cannot be too severe. Frequently these individuals, whose activity is a danger to the community at large, persecute their victims for many years in succession. Tardieu reports the case of a celebrated literary man, “whose purse the blackmailers regarded as their own.”For more than twenty years in successionhe was plucked by successive generations of blackmailers, who considered him an assured source of income. He was “passed on from one to another.” As a rule, blackmailers wait for their victims in public lavatories; they suddenly assert that they have been indecently assaulted, and demand hush-money, which is commonly given to them, even by heterosexuals. A case of the last-mentioned kind recently occurred in Berlin, when a quite innocent young merchant was being plundered in this way, and his wife, by a courageous denunciation of the shameless blackmailer, freed him from this tyranny. It is, however, unquestionable that blackmail often ensues upon real advances on the part of homosexuals, and after the performance of sexual acts; and there is no doubt that in Germany the existence of § 175 of the Criminal Code has been most advantageous to professional blackmailers, has led to numerous scandals (alike disagreeable and dangerous to the community), and has given rise to numerous suicides.
This celebrated § 175 runs as follows:
“Unnatural vice between two persons of the male sex, or between a man and an animal, is punishable with imprisonment; it can also be punished with loss of civil rights.”
“Unnatural vice between two persons of the male sex, or between a man and an animal, is punishable with imprisonment; it can also be punished with loss of civil rights.”
This paragraph of the Imperial Criminal Code is identical with § 143 of the former Prussian Criminal Code. Similarordinances,[552]in some cases even more severe, are found in the laws of Austria-Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Bulgaria, the State of New York, most of the cantons of Switzerland, and more especially in Great Britain, where the most severe punishmentsare inflicted, and, at any rate logically, are inflicted also on women who practise homosexual intercourse. On the other hand, punishment for homosexual intercourse has been completelyabolishedin France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Turkey, Italy, Spain, the Swiss Cantons of Genf, Wallis, Waadt and Tessin, the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, the Principality of Monaco, and in Mexico.
§ 143 of the Prussian Criminal Code was adopted as the basis of § 175 of the German Criminal Code, in view of “the consciousness of right of the people,” who “condemn such practices not only as vicious, but also as criminal.” But this consciousness of right is based upon defective knowledge, and upon an erroneous view of homosexuality. As soon as we recognize that in homosexuality we have to do with a primary natural disposition, and as soon as this view has permeated wide circles of the population, the old consciousness of right will be replaced by anewone,which will demand the repeal of a criminal law, by whicha natural phenomenonis regarded as a vice and a crime, and is esteemed as infamous. My studies in recent years having convinced me that in homosexuality we have to do with a typical biological phenomenon, I feel that I must unhesitatingly approve of the efforts of theScientific and Humanitarian Committee, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, which aims at making the people understand the nature of homosexuality, and demands the repeal of § 175 of the German Criminal Code. All the more is this reform demanded because real homosexualcrimescan be very readily dealt with by means of the sections of the Criminal Code relating to sexual delinquencies in general.
Apart from this general codification of the injustice of § 175, and apart from the above-mentioned tragical consequences of the existence of this section, it is also necessary to point out that the expressions used therein are absurd and illogical.
1. Unnatural vice between men is punished, whereas that between women is left impune. But why should this latter be the case, if we adopt the standpoint (which we have, indeed, seen to be untenable) that homosexual intercourse is in itself vicious and criminal—why should homosexual intercourse between women be less vicious and criminal than homosexual intercourse between men?
2. The idea “unnatural vice” is equally absurd and inconsequent, and makes justice in respect of these offences absolutely impossible. By this term is understood not merely pædication (immissio membri in anum), but also any kind of intercoursebetween men “resembling sexual intercourse”—that is,coitus in os,coitus inter femora, even simplefrictio membri—whilst mutual masturbation and other perverse practices are not punishable.
3. § 175 does not safeguard anycitizen,[553]for the sexual freedom of the individual is not disturbed in any way by the intercourse between two adult men who fully understand what they are doing, nor is the general moral sense injured in any way if the act is not seen by any third person. In this latter respect, however, § 183 of the Criminal Code, which punishes annoyance to the public by improper conduct, already affords sufficient protection.
4. If § 175 is maintained with especial reference to the existence of professional male unchastity, von Liszt has rightly replied to this contention that the latter form of unchastity can be rendered harmless by a modified reading of § 361bof the Criminal Code, just as the protection of virtue can be safeguarded by other sections of the Code.
5. The effectiveness of § 175 is extremely limited. According to Hirschfeld (“Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages,” vol. vi., p. 175), no more than 0·007 % of the existing punishable homosexual practices of the present day are detected and punished. Therefore a fewisolatedindividuals are punished for an offence which thousands of others commit with impunity.
6. When § 175 of the Criminal Code was drawn up, the law-givers knew absolutely nothing about the homosexual impulse as an essential outcome of the personality; they merely wished to punish heterosexuals who committed homosexual practices, not to punish genuine homosexuals (cf.Numa Prætorius, “The Question of the Responsibility of Homosexuals,” published in theMonthly Review of Criminal Psychology, edited by G. Aschaffenburg, 1906, p. 561).
The worst and most tragic consequence of § 175 is the permanent infamy and social contempt suffered by persons who,without any blame to themselves, have a mode of sexual perception diverging from that of the great majority. The state itself commits a crime when it enrols in the category of vice and crime a biological phenomenon which has recently been recognized as such even by the Evangelical and CatholicChurches,[554]and has been freedby these Churches from the stigma of immorality. The continuance of this great injustice is the frequent cause of thesuicideof homosexuals, especially of such as are men of exceptional spiritual and moral cultivation, andfrequently before they have actually indulged in their homosexual impulse, the best proof that we have to do, not with vicious, but with unhappy men, who are unable to bear the misery of being socially despised and unjustly misunderstood by their associates. How many suicides from homosexual grounds occur it is impossible to establish exactly. We can only suspect the cause from certain attendant circumstances. A highly respected literary man writes to me regarding this question of the suicide of homosexuals: “When a fine young fellow, suffering frightfully as a result of his inherited disposition, shoots himself, his family will rather suggest that the cause was a chancre (which he has never had), than they will admit his homosexuality.” Several such cases have come under his notice. “A better cause,” he suggests, “for the suicide would have been unhappy love, for that is the actual truth.”Zola,[555]speaking of the letters of a homosexual, says that they exhibited “the most heart-breaking cry of human agony” that he had ever known.
“He earnestly resisted yielding to such shameful, lustful love, and he longed to know whence came this contempt of all men, whence this continuous readiness of the law-courts to crush him down, when in his flesh and blood were inborn a disgust towards woman, whilst he had brought into the world with him a true feeling of love towards man. Never had one possessed by a demon, never had a poor human body given up to and tortured by the unknown powers of the sexual impulse, so painfully expressed his misery. Have we not here a truly physiological case definitely displayed before our eyes—an inversion, an error, on the part of Nature? Nothing, in my opinion, is more tragical, and nothing demands more urgently investigation and a means of cure, if such can possibly be found.”
“He earnestly resisted yielding to such shameful, lustful love, and he longed to know whence came this contempt of all men, whence this continuous readiness of the law-courts to crush him down, when in his flesh and blood were inborn a disgust towards woman, whilst he had brought into the world with him a true feeling of love towards man. Never had one possessed by a demon, never had a poor human body given up to and tortured by the unknown powers of the sexual impulse, so painfully expressed his misery. Have we not here a truly physiological case definitely displayed before our eyes—an inversion, an error, on the part of Nature? Nothing, in my opinion, is more tragical, and nothing demands more urgently investigation and a means of cure, if such can possibly be found.”
Thecomplete enlightenmentof the people would give rise to a spontaneous change in their conception of homosexuality, to which, moreover, the greater number of homosexuals belonging to the better classes could contribute, if they would freely andopenly admit their tendencies. The secrecy and hypocrisy of many urnings is partly responsible for the hitherto prevailing false views on homosexuality. We cannot spare them this reproach.
Finally, § 175 is not merely an injustice to homosexuals, but it is also a danger to heterosexuals, in consequence of theblackmailwhich is so intimately associated with the existence of this section. It is not enough that these criminals of the most debased kind, who to a small extent only are recruited from the ranks of male prostitutes, reduce numerous unhappy urnings to social and financial ruin, and drive many others to suicide or to crime, of which the remarkable case of a County Court Judge a few years ago afforded a typical example. These wretches also dare with ever-greater success to make use of § 175 for the purpose of blackmailingcompletely normal heterosexuals. In fact, they often succeed better with these latter than they do with homosexuals, because to the normal man the idea of being regarded as homosexual is so repulsive.
A remedy for all these evils—for the suicides as well as for the blackmailing—can only be found in theenlightenmentof the whole people—the first and most important thing to do—and in theunconditional repealof § 175 of the Criminal Code.
It has been a most useful service on the part of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee—a service the value of which has not yet been sufficiently recognized—that it has endeavoured, above all, to bring about the enlightenment of the people by means of popularwritings,[556]and of the learned by means of scientific publications, such as the most successfulAnnual for Sexual Intermediate Stages(8 volumes, 1899-1906), and by means of lectures, by the convocation of public meetings, by petitions, etc.
The petition of the committee to the legislative bodies of the German Empire, asking for the repeal of § 175 of the Criminal Code, was signed by 5,000 persons belonging to the circles of men of science, judges, physicians, priests, schoolmasters, authors, and artists, among whom were some of the most celebrated names of cultured Germany. I cite here a few only: Ferdinand Avenarius, Hans von Basedow, Woldemar von Biedermann, H. Bulthaupt, Professor Crédé, Albert Eulenburg, Theodor Gaedertz, Rudolf von Gottschall, Franz Görres, O. E. Hartleben, Gerhart Hauptmann, S. Jadassohn, Hermann Kaulbach, R. vonKrafft-Ebing, Joseph Kürschner, H. Kurella, Walter Leistikow, Leppmann, Max Liebermann, G. von Liebig, Detlev von Lilieneron, Franz von Liszt, Berthold Litzmann, Ph. Lotmar, John Henry Mackay, Mendel, Friedrich Moritz, P. Näcke, Paul Natorp, Albert Neisser, Max Nordau, A. von Oechelhäuser, A. von Oppenheim, J. Pagel, Pelman, R. Penzig, Placzek, Felix Poppenberg, Rainer Maria Rilke, O. Rosenbach, Wilhelm Roux, Max Rubner, Benno Rüttenauer, Johannes Schlaf, Arthur Schnitzler, A. von Schrenck-Notzing, Alwin Schulz, Moritz Schwalb, Georg Schweinfurth, Adolf von Sonnenthal, K. von Tepper-Laski, H. Unverricht, Max Verworn, A. Vierkandt, Richard Voss, Hans Wachenhusen, Felix Weingartner, Adolf Wilbrandt, Ernst von Wildenbruch, F. von Winkel, E. von Wolzogen, Ernst Ziegler, Theobald Ziegler, Theophil Zolling.
In addition, we might mention that in the year 1904 not less than 2,800 German physicians, as well as 750 head masters and masters of higher schools, signed the petition to the Reichstag for the repeal of § 175. Owing to certain scandals by which the highest circles were sympathetically affected—I need recall only the cases of Hohenau, Krupp, Israel, von Schenk, etc.—the conviction has been forced upon members of the most influential political circles that the repeal of the paragraphs of the Criminal Code relating to urnings is an unconditional necessity. We may, therefore, expect that the repeal will be effected within the next few years.
Compared with true original homosexuality in men, the same condition in women is of considerably less importance, because in women homosexuality is undoubtedlymuch less commonthan it is in men. In comparison with the number of urnings, the number offemale homosexuals—of “urnindes,” “Lesbian lovers,” or “tribades”—is relatively small; whereas in many women, even at a comparatively advanced age, the so-called “pseudo-homosexuality” (see the next chapter) is much more frequently met with than it is in men. In the case of heterosexual men it is usually impossible to induce a homosexual mode of perception or to give rise to any kind of taste for homosexual activity; whereas in heterosexual women the corresponding change certainly occurs much more easily. Tendernesses and caresses play, indeed, among normal heterosexual women a rôle which makes it easier for us to understand how readily in woman pseudo-homosexual tendencies may arise.Still, it is impossible to doubt the existence also of original homosexualityin women.These are the cases in which, just as in urnings, the homosexual impulse appears in very early childhood, often long before puberty, in which case also the girl is distinguished from her heterosexual comrades in external appearance, exhibiting indications of a masculine build of body (slight development of the breasts, narrowness of the pelvis, development of a moustache, a deep voice, etc.); but such indications may be entirely absent, and the girl may not be distinguished from others in any respect beyond the perverse direction of the sexual impulse. These true tribades are much rarer than the false tribades, the pseudo-Lesbian lovers. For example, when visiting an urnings’ ball we may be quite sure that 99 % of the male homosexuals assembled there are true homosexuals; but at a tribades’ ball—such, also, are given in Berlin—certainly a much smaller percentage are “genuine”; the bulk of the women present are pseudo-homosexuals. I here append the interesting reminiscences of a genuine urninde, by which this relationship between original homosexuality and pseudo-homosexuality in women is very clearly shown:
Thoughts of a Lonely Woman!“Born in the country, the daughter of a merchant, I grew up as a very dreamy being, with an unceasing yearning after something unknown, beautiful, great—with a longing to become a singer or an artist. At the age of twelve I was already completely ‘woman,’ very luxuriantly developed, although still half a child,filled always with an uncontrollable longing for a beloved feminine being who should kiss me and caress me, whom I was to regard with love and with a sentiment of self-sacrifice. At the age of thirteen I came to live with relatives in a provincial town, where for a year I attended a young ladies’ school. Of my dreams no single one could be fulfilled. My mother, who was widowed when I was only three years old, had a severe economical struggle, being encumbered with six small children. After my elder brothers and sisters were married, I myself, being then twenty-four years of age, had to go out into the world to seek my own living, ignorant of the world and its dangers, delivered up to commonness and intrigue. I got a position in the house of a widow, filling the post of ‘companion.’ My ‘principal,’ a woman sixty years of age, was at first unsympathetic to me, but she treated me in a loving and motherly manner, which pleased me, for I was of a pliant and receptive disposition. Gradually I became her confidante. Every evening I had to get into bed with her (I slept close by); I must touch her with my hands. I did not then really understand why I had to stroke her legs; but one evening this sexagenarian guided my hand into a forbidden place. Now it became clear to me that this woman still had erotic perceptions. I felt how she quivered under my touch, pressed me firmly to herself, etc.; but I, for my part, felt nothing. It mighthave been different had she been a friend of my own age. I had not at that time any idea that ‘psychically’ I was different from other girls. I had an unceasing yearning for love, not directly sensual love, but spiritual love, out of which sensual love might later develop. Among the inmates of our house was a young merchant, a fine-looking man, who besieged me with his love, and, after long hesitation, I at length one day consented to give him the best that woman has to give. He took possession of my body with brutal voluptuousness. I was under the delusion that he would make me his wife. I had in the sexual actno perception at all, and was disillusioned. One day my seducer told me that he was going to be married, asking me to return him the ring he had given me, and offering me money. Moved to the inmost soul, without any human being to give me counsel or help (from a feeling of shame I had not disclosed the matter to my principal), I threw the ring at him, resigned my position, and made myself independent. I will only say in a few words how I had to struggle, to fight for my existence, how I was lied to and deceived by rascally men. When I came to Berlin I heard and read of homosexual love, but could not find what I dreamed of—namely, spiritual love, out of which sensual love might spring. I learned to know homosexual women, but they exhibited to me such elemental passion, brutality, sensuality, that, notwithstanding all my yearning for ‘homosexual’ love, I remained unresponsive. Only in kissing the lips of a woman sympathetic to me I have experienced an agreeable sensation, but that sweet state which I was able to induce in others by contact with them wasin menot forthcoming. I began to wonder whether Nature had denied me this sensation, though I was myself also a normally developed woman. For years I lived ‘ascetically,’ since I regarded myself as a ‘psychological’ problem—I avoided every kind of intercourse—I only had a desire for tenderness and caresses. I often loved handsome women, feeling the wish to kiss them and to touch them, and I had learned to know women of the kind who prostitute themselves to other women for money. These were hateful to me, and never could I form a friendship with such, because they knew only common brutal sensuality, towards which I was not responsive.“Some years ago I suffered from a severe abdominal and nervous disorder. I have already passed my fortieth year. After an illness lasting two years, I still feel the desire for homosexual love. Hitherto I have lived unhappily, continually asking myself why Nature has treated me so cruelly. Is it not possible once at least to enjoy this perception? A few weeks ago I made the acquaintance of a married woman, whose husband has been impotent for years, whilst she, on the other hand, is a very passionate character. Unfortunately, this woman, although in other respects she is very sympathetic to me, is upon a comparatively low plane of culture, and, what frightens me more, she has an intimacy with a female friend who is quite uncultured, but who resembles her in respect of sexual love, and who night after night lies with her in bedbeside the husband, and the two women indulge their perverse voluptuousness, the friend playing the ‘man’s’ part. I have seen many strange things in my course through life, butsuch a marriageis a new experience to me. The man terms himself an artist, a painter, and allows his wife free play in bisexual love. I believe that this man himself experiences a titillation of the senses when he seesthe two women together, and also that he makes drawings of ‘acts,’ out of which he makes a profit. In this house I have seen into a deep abyss, yet other bisexual women visit it. Although I have found my peace disturbed by these women, although I have been to a certain extent intoxicated, the conditions are too repulsive to me—since this woman is sunk into a morass deeper than she herself understands. Only through me does she begin to understand it. But a longer intercourse with her is impossible, for she lacks all the qualities that I look for in a woman whom I could love. In actual fact I envy this creature, for she is happy, since she experiences to the full those sweet sensations which Nature denies to me. Are there any more beings unhappy like myself? Perhaps the acquaintanceship with a woman whose feelings were similar to my own would be a happiness, if Fate would only have so much pity upon me as to throw a sorrowful companion in my way. I hope for it, but I do not believe that it will happen.“To what sex do I really belong?”
Thoughts of a Lonely Woman!
“Born in the country, the daughter of a merchant, I grew up as a very dreamy being, with an unceasing yearning after something unknown, beautiful, great—with a longing to become a singer or an artist. At the age of twelve I was already completely ‘woman,’ very luxuriantly developed, although still half a child,filled always with an uncontrollable longing for a beloved feminine being who should kiss me and caress me, whom I was to regard with love and with a sentiment of self-sacrifice. At the age of thirteen I came to live with relatives in a provincial town, where for a year I attended a young ladies’ school. Of my dreams no single one could be fulfilled. My mother, who was widowed when I was only three years old, had a severe economical struggle, being encumbered with six small children. After my elder brothers and sisters were married, I myself, being then twenty-four years of age, had to go out into the world to seek my own living, ignorant of the world and its dangers, delivered up to commonness and intrigue. I got a position in the house of a widow, filling the post of ‘companion.’ My ‘principal,’ a woman sixty years of age, was at first unsympathetic to me, but she treated me in a loving and motherly manner, which pleased me, for I was of a pliant and receptive disposition. Gradually I became her confidante. Every evening I had to get into bed with her (I slept close by); I must touch her with my hands. I did not then really understand why I had to stroke her legs; but one evening this sexagenarian guided my hand into a forbidden place. Now it became clear to me that this woman still had erotic perceptions. I felt how she quivered under my touch, pressed me firmly to herself, etc.; but I, for my part, felt nothing. It mighthave been different had she been a friend of my own age. I had not at that time any idea that ‘psychically’ I was different from other girls. I had an unceasing yearning for love, not directly sensual love, but spiritual love, out of which sensual love might later develop. Among the inmates of our house was a young merchant, a fine-looking man, who besieged me with his love, and, after long hesitation, I at length one day consented to give him the best that woman has to give. He took possession of my body with brutal voluptuousness. I was under the delusion that he would make me his wife. I had in the sexual actno perception at all, and was disillusioned. One day my seducer told me that he was going to be married, asking me to return him the ring he had given me, and offering me money. Moved to the inmost soul, without any human being to give me counsel or help (from a feeling of shame I had not disclosed the matter to my principal), I threw the ring at him, resigned my position, and made myself independent. I will only say in a few words how I had to struggle, to fight for my existence, how I was lied to and deceived by rascally men. When I came to Berlin I heard and read of homosexual love, but could not find what I dreamed of—namely, spiritual love, out of which sensual love might spring. I learned to know homosexual women, but they exhibited to me such elemental passion, brutality, sensuality, that, notwithstanding all my yearning for ‘homosexual’ love, I remained unresponsive. Only in kissing the lips of a woman sympathetic to me I have experienced an agreeable sensation, but that sweet state which I was able to induce in others by contact with them wasin menot forthcoming. I began to wonder whether Nature had denied me this sensation, though I was myself also a normally developed woman. For years I lived ‘ascetically,’ since I regarded myself as a ‘psychological’ problem—I avoided every kind of intercourse—I only had a desire for tenderness and caresses. I often loved handsome women, feeling the wish to kiss them and to touch them, and I had learned to know women of the kind who prostitute themselves to other women for money. These were hateful to me, and never could I form a friendship with such, because they knew only common brutal sensuality, towards which I was not responsive.
“Some years ago I suffered from a severe abdominal and nervous disorder. I have already passed my fortieth year. After an illness lasting two years, I still feel the desire for homosexual love. Hitherto I have lived unhappily, continually asking myself why Nature has treated me so cruelly. Is it not possible once at least to enjoy this perception? A few weeks ago I made the acquaintance of a married woman, whose husband has been impotent for years, whilst she, on the other hand, is a very passionate character. Unfortunately, this woman, although in other respects she is very sympathetic to me, is upon a comparatively low plane of culture, and, what frightens me more, she has an intimacy with a female friend who is quite uncultured, but who resembles her in respect of sexual love, and who night after night lies with her in bedbeside the husband, and the two women indulge their perverse voluptuousness, the friend playing the ‘man’s’ part. I have seen many strange things in my course through life, butsuch a marriageis a new experience to me. The man terms himself an artist, a painter, and allows his wife free play in bisexual love. I believe that this man himself experiences a titillation of the senses when he seesthe two women together, and also that he makes drawings of ‘acts,’ out of which he makes a profit. In this house I have seen into a deep abyss, yet other bisexual women visit it. Although I have found my peace disturbed by these women, although I have been to a certain extent intoxicated, the conditions are too repulsive to me—since this woman is sunk into a morass deeper than she herself understands. Only through me does she begin to understand it. But a longer intercourse with her is impossible, for she lacks all the qualities that I look for in a woman whom I could love. In actual fact I envy this creature, for she is happy, since she experiences to the full those sweet sensations which Nature denies to me. Are there any more beings unhappy like myself? Perhaps the acquaintanceship with a woman whose feelings were similar to my own would be a happiness, if Fate would only have so much pity upon me as to throw a sorrowful companion in my way. I hope for it, but I do not believe that it will happen.
“To what sex do I really belong?”
In the love-history of this genuine urninde the ideal element is especially manifest; likewise the instinctive disinclination to man, which, remarkably enough, is often more powerfully developed in strongly feminine characters than in the more masculine tribades, as the prototype of which latter we may mention the painter Rosa Bonheur. During childhood Rosa Bonheur felt herself to be a boy, and preferred the society of boys to that ofgirls.[557]Throughout her life, notwithstanding her homosexual love, she felt strong sympathy with men. Such a double relationship occurs also among urnindes of the first kind. Even the true urninde, I may say, isnot so extremely homosexualas is the true urning. Take, for example, the followingaccount[558]of an original homosexual, and you will see the difference:
“I have not lost any of the valuable things of life—far otherwise. Many-sided, many-shadowed intellectual sympathy leads any man of lofty mind into harmony with me. There emanates unconsciously from my soul a profound, tender charm. My friends find me necessary to them. I share their interests. In our relationship there pass between us the most wonderful shades of sympathetic feeling—what the French so expressively speak of asl’amitié amoureuse. Thus my mode of being becomes absorbed into that of my friend, a peculiar melody passes to and fro between us, and a peculiar melody sounds in the stillness of my own soul. All the fine and delicate sensations which I have received from my friends become in me transformed into poietic force—the ecstasies of my spirit assume form and substance. From the spiritualization of the impulse there springs a stream clear as crystal, there arise passion and ardour; my exceptional soul lifts me upwards, above all sorrows and vexations. In this way is a talent conceived, and amid ecstasy it is born.”
“I have not lost any of the valuable things of life—far otherwise. Many-sided, many-shadowed intellectual sympathy leads any man of lofty mind into harmony with me. There emanates unconsciously from my soul a profound, tender charm. My friends find me necessary to them. I share their interests. In our relationship there pass between us the most wonderful shades of sympathetic feeling—what the French so expressively speak of asl’amitié amoureuse. Thus my mode of being becomes absorbed into that of my friend, a peculiar melody passes to and fro between us, and a peculiar melody sounds in the stillness of my own soul. All the fine and delicate sensations which I have received from my friends become in me transformed into poietic force—the ecstasies of my spirit assume form and substance. From the spiritualization of the impulse there springs a stream clear as crystal, there arise passion and ardour; my exceptional soul lifts me upwards, above all sorrows and vexations. In this way is a talent conceived, and amid ecstasy it is born.”
The need for a spiritual contact with men is among homosexual women much stronger than the corresponding inclination on the part of urnings for spiritual contact with woman natures. For this reason there is no doubt that the “Woman’s Movement”—that is, in the movement directed towards the acquirement by women of all the attainments of masculine culture—homosexual women have played a notablepart.[559]Indeed, according to oneauthor,[560]the “Woman’s Question” is mainly the question regarding the destiny of virile homosexual women. I find it necessary to doubt whether, as Hammermaintains,[561]the raging hatred of men—the converse quality to the anti-feminism of the male urnings—really proceeds from the uranian group of the Woman’s Movement, for there exist no literary documents of importance to prove the suggested connexion. Homosexual women of intellectual weight have also assured me that among them there does at times exist an enmity to men on principle, just as,mutatis mutandis, misogyny has been developed as a system both from the heterosexual and from the homosexual side. For the diffusion of pseudo-homosexuality the Woman’s Movement is of great importance, as we shall see later.
The individual and social relationships of feminine uranism are nearly the same as those of male uranism. In both cases there exists an entire scale, running from pure Platonism to ardent sensuality. One kind of Platonic tribades are those described by Catulle Mendés in his sketch “Protectrices.” These are ladies of position who allow themselves the luxury of a “protégée,” generally a girl employed at the theatre, with whom during the performances they exchange glances, whose expenses they pay, with whom they go out driving, without the matter proceeding to actual sexual relations. In other cases, however, sensual gratification is the desired goal, which is attained by kisses, embraces, friction of the genital organs, or cuninilinctus (the so-called “Sapphism”). In this intercourse one party—the “father”—plays the active part, the other—“the mother”—the passive part. There exist passionate and intimate relationships of long duration—true “marriages”—among tribades. Thus, d’Estoc reports (“Paris-Eros,” p. 58) relationships of this kind which have lasted thirty years. Still, as a general rule,feminine homosexuals change their relationships more frequently than male homosexuals. An elderly tribade, whose correspondence lies before me, had within four years three love relationships. In these relationships jealousy plays an even greater part than in heterosexual liaisons. Two sympathetic urnindes who lived together described to me very vividly the joys and sorrows of theamor lesbicus. The cause of the troubles is always atertia, never atertius gaudens.
Like the urnings, the tribades also have their meeting-places,jour fixes. One such meeting, at which four genuine female homosexuals and one male homosexual assembled, I had the opportunity of attending. They have their parties, and even their balls, at which the virile tribades appear in men’sclothing,[562]and (as also when at home) use male nicknames. There also exist female prostitutes who devote their services entirely to urnindes. This tribadistic prostitution is especially widespread in Paris. Such prostitutes are calledgouines, orgougnottes, orchevalières du clair de lune. Theatrical agents are said to be especially occupied with tribadistic procurement. There also exist tribadistic brothels inParis.[563]
Original, congenital, enduring homosexuality would appear to be an exclusively human peculiarity. It is very doubtful whether a similar condition exists among animals. We recognize among the lower animals homosexual acts, but nohomosexuality.[564]Thus we have no philogenetic starting-point for the explanation of homosexuality. Moreover, homosexuality is fundamentally different from the other sexual perversions, sadism and masochism. These represent quiteextremeforms of biological phenomena, an abnormal increase of physiological impulsive manifestations that occur in the normal heterosexual life, as part of sexuality in general. But homosexuality is an alterationin the direction of the very impulse itself—a change in the verynature of sexuality. To put the matter shortly, it is the appearance of a sexualityheterogeneous to and not corresponding with the bodily structure. To define homosexuality as the appearance of a feminine sexual psyche in a masculine body, or of a masculine sexual psyche in a feminine body, does not apply to all cases—for example, it does not apply to virile urnings or to tribades who remain womanly. The definition of homosexuality as a sexuality which does not correspond to the bodily structure embraces both these possibilities.
Whenever homosexuality in men is associated with a marked development of feminine secondary sexual characters, or in women with a marked development of masculine secondary sexual characters, the homosexual sensibility may be said to have to some extent a physical basis, but not completely so. For the “intermediate stage theory” proposed by Hirschfeld—the intermixture of feminine and masculine characters—may apply satisfactorily to “bisexuality,” to indeterminate sexual sensibility; but it does not apply to the thoroughly one-sided, monistic sexual sensibility, directedonlytowards members of the same sex, and often appearing very early, before the days of puberty. Moreover, in heterosexual male individuals the external appearance may at times suggest that there is a strong intermixture of feminine characters. These men, though heterosexual, have a womanly appearance.
The “intermediate stage theory” of Hirschfeld, which von Krafft-Ebing also appears to have recognized in his last work (“New Studies in the Subject of Homosexuality”), a theory which explains homosexual phenomena as dependent upon the existence of transitional stages between the sexes (“sexual links” of Hirschfeld), and which, moreover, erroneously includes the typical hermaphrodite states—this interesting theory explainsa portion onlyof original homosexuality. It fails in casesin which homosexuality occurs in the absence of any divergence from type—for example, in those cases in which male individuals with thoroughly normal masculine bodies exhibit marked homosexual sensibility in early childhood, long before puberty. But these are the cases which offer the greatest possible difficulties to a scientific explanation.Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Ulrich’s “feminine soul in a masculine body” applies toeffeminate urnings, such as he was himself. But is the mode of sensibility ofvirilehomosexuals “effeminate”? Why do we speak of a third sex? Here lie difficulties which we cannot overcome without further assistance.
How does it come to pass that the central organs in homosexuals do not correspond to the peripheral sexual organs, although the latter are formed embryologically long before the former, so that the central organs should properly be guided in their development by the peripheral organs? But they are not so guided. That is only explicable in this way—that the association between the central organs and the peripheral organs is interrupted by a third influence, and thatthis last influence has a peculiar effectupon the central organsaltogether independent of the nature of the reproductive glands.
I will formulate this new theory of homosexuality in the following terms:
1. The so-called “undifferentiated stage” of the sexual impulse (Max Dessoir) may often fail to appear in cases in which the sexual impulse, either in heterosexuals or homosexuals, is definitely directed before puberty unmistakably towards the members of one particular sex. Especially in homosexuals do we often seebeforepuberty the clear and unmistakable direction of the sexual impulse towards members of thesamesex.
2. A critical theory of homosexuality must also explain the extreme cases; above all, it must also explain male homosexuality associated with complete virility.
3. The sexual organs and the reproductive glands cannot be the determining cause, because homosexuality makes its appearance in association with thoroughly typical male reproductive organs; nor can the brain be the determining cause in cases of true homosexuality, for, notwithstanding the intentional and unintentional operation of heterosexual influences on thought and imagination, homosexuality cannot be eradicated, and continues to develop.
4. Since this homosexuality often makes its appearance as an inclination (not as the sexual impulse) longbeforepuberty, andbeforethe proper activity of the reproductive glands is developed, it appears a reasonable suggestion that in homosexuality some physiological manifestation associated with “sexuality,” but not directly associated with the reproductive glands, undergoes achangewhich results in an alteration of the direction of the sexual impulse.
6. The most obvious influences to think of in this connexion arechemicalinfluences, changes in the chemistry of sexual tension, which latter is certainly to a large extentindependentof the reproductive glands, since it may persist in eunuchs. But the nature of this sexual chemistry is still entirely obscure.
Such a way of conceiving the process is thoroughly reasonable and tenable on scientific grounds, as was shown by E. H. Starling and L.Krehl[565]in their communication to the Scientific Congress at Stuttgart in the year 1905, regarding disturbances of chemical correlation in the organism, especially disturbances of the chemical influences proceeding from the reproductive organs. All minuter details regarding these “sexual hormone” (to use Starling’s own phrase) are still unknown, but the experiments to which we alluded in an earlier chapter have proved their existence. In my view, the anatomical contradiction, the natural monstrosity, of a feminine—or, at any rate, an unmanly—psyche in a typical masculine body, or that of a feminine or unmanly sexual psyche associated with normally developed and normally functioning male genital organs, can only be explained in this manner by taking into account this intercurrent third factor. This can be deduced very readily from some earlyembryonic disturbancesof sexual chemistry. This would also explain why it is that homosexuality so often occurs in perfectly healthy families, as an isolated phenomenon which has nothing to do either with inheritance or with degeneration. When von Römer, on the contrary, describes homosexuality as a process of “regeneration,” we must maintain that for this view there are no sufficient grounds. Here begins theriddleof homosexuality; for me, at any rate, it is one. My own theory only attempts to explain the proper physiological connexions of homosexuality better, and, above all, more scientifically than earlier theories. With regard to the ultimate cause of the relatively frequent occurrence of homosexuality as an original phenomenon, this theory has, however, nothing to say.
I do not suggest that I am able for a moment to find the ultimate reason of the being and nature of homosexuality. There remains here a riddle to be solved. But from the standpoint of civilization and reproduction homosexuality is a senseless and aimless dysteleological phenomenon, like many another “natural product”—as, for example, the human cæcum. In an earlier chapter I drew attention to the fact that civilization has entailed an increasingly sharp sexual differentiation—that is, the antithesis between “man” and “woman” has become continuallyclearer. The distinction between the sexes is a product rather of civilization than of primitive nature. All sexual indifference, all sexual links, are primitive characters. Eduard von Mayer rightly believes that in the earliest days of the human race homosexuality was much more widely diffused than it is at present, that, in fact, it came into being side by side with heterosexual love. Civilization by means of inheritance, adaptation, and differentiation, has continually more and more limited the extent of the homosexual impulse. Unquestionably the homosexual human being,as human being, has the same right to exist as the heterosexual. To doubt it would be preposterous. Also, as a sexual being, in so far as only the individual aspect of love comes under consideration, the homosexual has an equal right. But for the species, and also for the advancement of civilization, homosexuality has no importance, or very little. It is obvious that, as a kind of enduring “monosexuality,” it contradicts the purposes of the species. Equally obvious is it that the whole of civilization is the product of the physical and mental differentiation of the sexes, that civilization has, in fact, to a certain extent, a heterosexual character. The greatest spiritual values we owe to heterosexuals, not to homosexuals.Moreover, reproduction first renders possible the preservation and permanence of new spiritual values.In the last resort the latter are not possible without the former. However obvious it may appear, we must still repeat that spiritual values exist only in respect of thefuture, that they only attain their true significancein the connexion and the succession of the generations, and that they are, therefore, eternally dependent upon heterosexual love as the intermediary by which this continuity is produced. The monosexual and homosexual instincts permanently limited to their own ego or their own sex are, therefore, in their innermost naturedysteleologicalandanti-evolutionistic. In speaking thus we leave entirely out of consideration the possibility that temporarily and for the purposes of individual development they may possess a relativejustification.[566]
Moreover, the majority of homosexuals have a deeply rooted sentiment of the lack of purpose and the aimlessness of theirmode of sexual perception, and this often gives them a very tragical and pitiable expression. Especially in the case of noble, spiritually important homosexuals, true carriers of civilization, is this sense of the incongruity between homosexuality and life most plainly felt. Even the talented Numa Prætorius (Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages, vol. vi., p. 543) recognizes that—